“Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal didn’t make top 10… Ottawa has been named the best place in Canada to live for the third straight year… Prairie cities such as Regina and Red Deer, Alta., cracked the top 10 — at fifth and ninth, respectively — thanks largely to their low unemployment rates and high income levels.”

“Disgraced former junior hockey coach Graham James has been sentenced to two years in prison for sexually abusing two of his players… James pleaded guilty in December to repeatedly sexually abusing NHL star Theo Fleury and his cousin, Todd Holt, when they played for him in the Western Hockey League in the 1980s and ’90s. Holt responded immediately with disappointment. ‘This sentence today is nothing short of a national travesty because we know that childhood abuse has reached epidemic proportions in our country,’ he read from a statement at a news conference in Cochrane, Alta.”

“Student protesters triggered a monster traffic jam in Montreal by blocking off access to a bridge this morning. In one of the more dramatic acts during the ongoing protests against tuition hikes, several dozen students stood across the Champlain Bridge during rush hour.”

Montrealers protest a lot. Also – you guys, your tuition is still the lowest in all of Canada, calm down please.

“The Quebec government has announced it is considering the possibility of suing Air Canada to ensure that maintenance work remains in the country. The government says its Justice Department lawyers are assessing the grounds for a lawsuit aimed at forcing the airline to continue using Aveos, which has plants in a number of Canadian cities.”

“A wheelchair-bound three-year-old in a cast travelling with his family to Disney World in Orlando, Florida got the scare of his life when he was subjected to a thorough invasive pat-down by TSA agents at the O’Hare Airport in Chicago.”

“Thousands of possible early human settlements have been discovered by archaeologists using computers to scour satellite images. Computers scanned the images for soil discolouration and mounds caused when mud-brick settlements collapsed.”

“New analysis of a photo taken in 1937 has led investigators to think it might show a piece of the landing gear from aviator Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra plane, which disappeared in June that year somewhere in the South Pacific. And at the State Department today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials gathered to announce that a privately funded search effort led by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) will be going to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati in July to see if they can find any evidence of the aircraft, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan.”

“B.C.’s Health Minister Michael de Jong announced Tuesday that the province will ban the use of commercial tanning beds by anyone under 18 to reduce the chances of developing skin cancer later in life. With the announcement, B.C. joins Nova Scotia as the only provinces to ban minors from using tanning beds.”

“A daily aspirin may cut your risk of cancer, new research suggests. But doctors advise that there’s no reason for everyone to start taking it — at least not yet… Patients who took daily aspirin were 36 percent less likely to be diagnosed with metastatic cancer, or cancer that had already spread throughout their body. Additionally, individuals taking aspirin for five years or more were 15 percent less likely to die from cancer.”

“According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, a wandering mind is a sign of a strong working memory, which in turn is a sign of intelligence. The researchers found that participants with higher working memory capacity reported more mind wandering in undemanding mental exercises. But despite their lack of focus, the daydreamers didn’t do worse on the tasks.”

“Apple Inc.’s new iPad runs “significantly hotter” than the earlier model when conducting processor-intensive tasks such as playing graphics-heavy games, according to Consumer Reports, which tested the device. The newest version of the market-leading tablet computer ran as hot as 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius), the magazine said on its website… The new device operates ‘well within our thermal specifications,’ Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, said in a statement. ‘If customers have any concerns they should contact AppleCare.'”

“Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it agreed to buy Kiva Systems Inc for $775 million in cash, a deal that will bring more robotic technology to the e-commerce company’s giant network of warehouses… Kiva develops robots that zip around warehouses, grabbing and moving shelves and crates full of products. The technology helps retailers fulfill online orders quickly and with fewer workers. Companies including Gap Inc, Staples Inc and Crate & Barrel, have used the technology.”

“The latest in the everyone-sue-everyone patent war is an alleged infringement by Samsung and Research In Motion for installing emoticon shortcut menus on their mobile phones… A firm called Varia Holdings began the process of suing both cell phone makers on Thursday for using its “emoticon input method and apparatus” patent, reports Ars Technica. The company asserts that it owns the idea of pop-up emoticon menus, which let users easily insert a happy or frowny face without having to type out the characters one at a time.”

“Nagoya University and Fujitsu have created software they say can automatically identify situations in which one party might “overtrust” the other. It does so by detecting changes in voice pitch and volume level that can occur under psychological duress. By combining this technology with keywords such as “indebtedness” or “compensation” that are characteristic to a specific type of remittance-soliciting phone phishing scam called furikomesagi, the researchers have developed a setup that’s now being tested in collaboration with the National Police Agency of Japan and the Bank of Nagoya.”

“A year after launching a controversial paywall, the New York Times says it has nearly half a million paying subscribers for its flagship paper. It also says it will make it harder for people to read on the Web without paying up. The Times is cutting back on the number of “free” articles it lets nonsubscribers read, from 20 a month to 10. The change goes into effect in April.”

My stance on paywalls remains – hate them. My visits to the New York Times page will continue to dwindle.

“In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around. ‘It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,’ said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it “an egregious privacy violation.'”

“What’s the first thing most lottery winners buy straight after they strike it rich? According to one survey cited by the Mirror Online, winners buy washing machines, followed by couches. It turns out, winning the lottery doesn’t necessarily reward the winner with a “rich person” mentality.”

Then how come we hear of all the people who blow away their lotto winnings on extravagant things? Man… if I won the lottery all of my purchases/investments would be very wise.

“‘The ‘Off-the-Record’ policy of one major market daily I deal with on a regular basis reads something like this: A reporter is permitted to agree to keep certain information off-the-record. However, if either the reporter or his/her editor deems the ‘off-the-record’ information newsworthy then the publication reserves the right to publish that information. Not surprisingly, the paper’s reporters rarely inform sources of the second half of the policy (even if they are aware of it),'”

Interesting! Not that I’ve done any hardcore reporting recently but the way I was taught (and just the way I feel ethically) is that if an agreement for an off the record comment has been made – you should keep it. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where anything off the record was truly groundbreaking/newsworthy that required extra thought into publication or not though so I can see how it would be tough for other reporters in certain situations.

“People will only be able to comment by using their Facebook account, which means their name, often even their photograph, will be linked to the statements they post. BCLocalNews.com is not alone in making this shift. Several media companies, equally troubled by the vitriolic trend of anonymous comments, are turning to Facebook to power their website commenting.”

Good move? Bad move? I think it’s a good idea. Keeps people accountable and gets rid of any derogatory comments that may more likely be made under an anonymous name.

“If this weekend’s attack on students had you wondering how bad pepper spray really is, science writer Deborah Blum has you covered. Answer: It’s five times more intense than the hottest natural pepper in the world. (Commercial pepper spray is twice as intense, but the police-grade stuff is supercharged.)”

Damn. That is not something you want in your eyes. Those poor UC Davis protesters.

“On Tuesday, Congress decided that pizza is a vegetable. I have to imagine that this news instilled confusion in many Americans, as many Americans are (a) familiar with pizza, (b) familiar with vegetables and (c) sane.”

“The world was a dangerous place for the first birds. Palaeontologists have found a fossil bird preserved where the stomach of a dinosaur would have been – the first direct evidence that dinos preyed on their feathered relatives.”

I always assumed anything small back in the day of the dinosaur was up for food grabs but I suppose we always need evidence, lol.

“Two scientists from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a colleague from Berkeley, argue that modern academic psychologists have so much flexibility with numbers that they can literally prove anything.”

Lol. Well with ‘study says this’ and ‘results from a study say that’ – all over the news each and every day, it makes a lot of sense that data from those things can be skewed.

“Of more than 1,100 middle school and high school students surveyed in 2008, 24 per cent said they had ever been “harassed” by texting. That was up from about 14 per cent in a survey of the same kids the year before.”

Just ignore or delete or block, teens. (Can you block contacts on your phone? I’m not sure I’ve ever tried).

“The law will dramatically increase sanctions for Albertans who drive after drinking… The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says the law will do little to prevent or punish drunk driving, but will have a severe impact on small business.”

“The city’s first seasonal parking ban has now been lifted, but not before bylaw officers issued nearly 1,300 ticket. Fletcher Kent reports.”

I filled in in the editing department today and this was the package I cut! How’d I do? Wish there had been more/better visuals of the guy who is referenced off the top and at the end but other then that I thought it was good, lol. I also cut another package for News Final but it was very stox-boring-viz-heavy so I won’t link it, lol.

Neat! I never hit the snooze button for some reason I’m either up exactly when my alarm rings or I physically re-change the alarm to ring again 5 or 10 minutes later, even though I realize that is what the snooze button is for, LOL.